In Progress #5, or A Study in Pornography

Yesterday was a 3.5 hour extravaganza at BFF's house. She began piecing together the red tier, while I began serging all of the previously pieced tiers. Unfortunately, it is necessary to do the straight stitch on a sewing machine, because the 4th thread on her serger always breaks. I don't know enough about sergers to try to fix it, and she has tried and tried. I am going to go to a class to learn how to use it properly, and then teach her, since we apparently have joint custody of the orgasmic Janome 660D.

We worked from 11pm until 2:30am. That's a total of 7 man-hours.

Today, we worked a LOT more. Since DS has gone to his grandmother's house for the weekend, I am kid-free. Her eldest is at his Dad's for the weekend, and her twins were the only ones around. We dragged both machines downstairs to the kitchen, where we could work & supervise the little monsters.

We worked from 11am until 8:30 this evening. I managed to finish serging the first 9 tiers. She is got as far as partially piecing the final tier. I have also serged some of that one. In the meantime, I gathered the tiers, pinned & serged them together. Tiers 1-8 are entirely together, and awaiting a final run of the sewing machine for the missing 4th thread. We have finally both agreed that we are crazy and packed it in so we could have supper. It has been a long, but very productive 2 days.

Oh, and have I mentioned that I love this woman with all my heart? If you have ever found your soul-mate, then you will understand what it is like to find the other half of yourself. We have been BFF's since 9th grade - 15 years! And never once have we had a fight, or argument. We can go long periods of time without seeing each other or even speaking because of the distance between us, and when we see each other, it's like nothing at all has changed. The fact that she is completely willing to sit through the insanity of this project with me just furthers that bond.

Rainbow Patchwork Skirt

Using 4"x4" squares, construct a 10-tier skirt with 1.5x increases, using the following colour scheme:

             Colour                      # Squares           Progress

• White                           13 squares             cut, sewn together, serged, attached
• White                           20 squares             cut, sewn together, serged, ruffled, attached
• Orange                         30 squares             cut, sewn together, serged, rufffled, attached
• Yellow                         45 squares              cut, sewn together, serged, ruffled, attached
• Green                           68 squares             cut, sewn together, serged, ruffled, attached
• Teal                              102 squares           cut, sewn together, serged, ruffled, attached
• Blue                              153 squares           cut, sewn together, serged, ruffled, attached
• Purple                           230 squares           cut, sewn together, serged, ruffled, attached
• Red                              345 squares            cut, sewn together, serged
• Pink                             690 squares            cut, sewing in progress

*Total sewing time: ~3.5hrs x2 labourers Friday*
                             ~9.5hrs x2 labourers Saturday*
                                   2-day total: ~27hrs

**Total time invested: ~48 hrs**


Oh, and we have come up with some names for this monstrosity: "A Study in Pornography" partially because of the sheer variety of fabulous fabrics, and partially because of my love affair with her serger; "Candice's Amazing Technicolour Dream Skirt" a la Andrew Lloyd Weber; "The Skirt from Hell" is self-explanatory; "Hem of Doom" is also self-explanatory.